A Simplicity Found
by JasNutter
Summary: If there would be a reason why John Watson's life shaped out the way it did, it would be Sherlock Holmes. (Shapeless one shot I just HAD to write, Hippie-Sherlock, pre-Afghanistan)


_Cannabis (marijuana) use. Mention of unprotected public (kind of) sex. Warnings :D_

* * *

The woods had always been there past the thickets, beckoning and seemingly enchanted to John, yet always unexplored. Unexplored for the twenty-five years he had seen it there and wondered what it was like.

It was just as he imagined: an awning of leaves against the dark sky, that faint woody smell of nature, the buzz of tiny wings beating; so silent in a way that represented silence – the cadence of insects, the rustling of night creatures, all the things not quite meant to be heard. Dark and lonely, it should have been frightening and John couldn't describe why it wasn't. He couldn't describe the life the floor seemed to pulse with. One foot caught on a gnarled root and he stumbled, swearing.

He hadn't stumbled in a while.

If there existed a mundane in chaos, John Watson had found it – charts and paperwork, stitches and tests, the onerous task of sickness management and a panoply of people completely meaningless to him and every bit as zestless as he had become. So _dull. _Mechanical. Two and a half measly decades and his life was becoming a jaded mix of aching arms and inchoate thoughts interrupted by a beeping pager or much needed sleep. He was _bored. _

And he didn't know where he was going.

There was hardly a path he could discern in the low light of his mobile phone, but there was a foot-worn trail between snarled branches and rotting life anyway, enough to be followed, and so he followed it. The thrumming was certainly there now, a beat that had no business being in the middle of the woods, thumping away like a heartbeat. He walked on, stopping once to stare at a wind-chimer hanging from a low branch, swaying and chiming in the gentle wind, and soon human noises were audible and a progressively louder sound of cymbals clashing with resonating guitar strings in a strange but ironically harmonious cacophony above the beat. Fire light flickered around the clearing and John felt as though he had walked into a dream.

Hazy smoke – a strange, earthy smell against his nostrils hanging like a low cloud in quite nearly mystical swirls. The gyrating bodies moving out of rhythm was off-putting and fascinating at the same time and John watched with questioning wonder, admiring their barefooted slaps against the mud, their thin arms above their heads. He circled the area, keeping close to the rank vegetation on the outskirts. The smoke burned in his throat and, savoring the sweet smell of incense, he watched as a long haired androgynous person spun, lose cotton trousers flaring. It was so surreal that John wondered if he was imagining it.

"_Oomph!" _He'd tripped over a pair of legs and fallen over them. Grunting, he scrambled back, palms stinging where they'd been scraped, apologizing.

"Oh, sorry. I'm so sorry."

He was met with two pairs of diamonds painted green against a bloodshot cornea. The curly head rested against a bark, light throwing hollows of a slender neck in sharp contrasts. John's gaze traveled from the hemp headband to the multicolored shirt falling open, tie-dye jeans smeared with mud, feet bare and scarred but slender all the same. Smoke trailed from a half-smoked joint. He should've looked slatternly, not the 'beautiful' John's mind immediately came up with.

John watched him smile lazily. "Hey", he rumbled, voice surprisingly deep for such a pretty-boy."Want a hit?"

The joint was proffered once, and then more insistently thrust at him when he refused. Finally, the boy shrugged.

"Suit yourself. Doctor are you?"

"How do you know that?" John asked, still wondering if this moment was actually happening outside his head. It probably was, he'd never been particularly imaginative, but It felt increasingly more like a hanging dream, obscure but vivid. The boy's languid smirk was imbued with smugness.

"That slight but permanent inclination of your thumb and forefinger. Do a lot of stitches? Intern?"

John blinked stupidly.

"Yes."

"Boring is it?"

"Yes."

"You're joining the army."

Just _what_ had he walked onto?

"Yes."

"I'm not a psychic." The boy took a long drag and exhaled. "Just highly observant", he added and giggled. He looked back at John, eyes half lidded. "Sure you don't want it?"

John shook his head.

"It's not bad for you or anything."

"Any type of smoking is bad for your lungs."

"Mmm", the boy took another long drag and exhaled another giggle, still looking at John. "Why don't you make yourself comfortable, Doctor?"

Realizing he'd been crouching back uncomfortably on his heels poised to get up anyway, he considered getting up and leaving, away from the smell of cannabis and these eccentric and potentially dangerous strangers and back to the warm and safe childhood home. It was a split second before his entire being shrugged flippantly.

He sat back against another trunk, the ground damp and cool through his jeans.

"How old are you?" He asked as he settled atop the roots, curious. The boy didn't look more than seventeen, his angular face sporting that certain smooth, youthful look of late adolescence. What was he doing here, with a band of hippies in the woods at mid-night, this 'highly-observant' teenager with a stoned drawl dripping from his posh, clipped syllables?

John waited through another drag, waited as a dread-locked man walked up to them, plucked the joint from the boy's fingers, dropped a kiss in his hair and ambled off. He waited as the boy shifted. His head lolled and John thought he'd gone to sleep.

"Twenty", he said suddenly, glassy green on John again. "I'm Sherlock Holmes and I'm twenty."

"That's a strange name."

He laughed as though it were the funniest thing he'd ever heard. "Strange", he gasped, shaking. "Strange", he dragged the word out, and wiped at his eye before turning back to a befuddled and awkward John. "Most things are, aren't they? What's yours? Something ordinary I'll bet."

It was rather ordinary. His parents had always been infuriatingly uncreative.

"John Watson", he affirmed, and the boy smirked again. "So, what are you doing here, then?"

"Getting stoned, partying", he shifted again and his gleaming chest caught the firelight. "Engaging in a mindless palaver with you."

"Do you – ", John groped around for a continuation to the mindless palaver."College?"

"Do I college?" Sherlock laughed. "Yes indeed, I college. Unbearably dull. I might drop out."

"You shouldn't", John advised immediately, mind jumping to Harry who'd dropped out a couple of years prior. She was speeding towards liver cancer now, shifting from job to job, flat to flat, and spending her life in a pointless drunken haze.

"Get through college; get a job, pay my bills…is that what you're getting at Doctor? How's that working out for you? Never bored, I imagine."

He flinched involuntarily and said nothing, watching bodies move in the dim light and trying to remember how he'd gotten here. This point in his life, his career, this odd party in the woods. They sat in silence, broken sometimes by Sherlock humming to himself.

These were unconventional people, anomalous to society – the freaks. John watched them as though through a clouded glass door, inexplicable figures moving to their own imaginary rhythm in the fog in lieu of the beat present already and thrumming through John. It wasn't any different from what was customary, though: John didn't come any closer to understanding that either. The doors were ever present, and John was always on the other side. Alone.

What good was propinquity when he couldn't find the link that bonded? A sudden need to reach out grabbed at him.

"Are you high often, then?"

"Hmm?" Sherlock ceased his tuneless humming, but didn't open his eyes. John watched the long thick eyelashes brush against high cheekbones.

"Do you light up often?"

"Only when I'm bored", he grinned. "Which is often. I've been told it makes me nicer, socially."

"I've never tried it," John confessed. "What do you do when you aren't bored?"

"Experiment," he said. John waited for him to elaborate. He didn't.

Nothing was said as a minute ticked by. Long fingers rested on the skinny thighs, rubbing light circular patterns. John's eyes strayed up to a bruising love bite, barely visible above a collarbone. A trail of nips disappeared into a fold of the shirt.

"Got a girlfriend?" He asked. He hadn't had one in a year – didn't have the time.

"Not my area", was the offhand reply.

"Oh", Jon shifted. "A boyfriend, then?"

He didn't know why the glossy green gaze sent a shiver through his spine.

"Why is fine, by the way", he added uncomfortably.

"I know its fine", he smiled, lovely face dimpling slightly. "I'm rather flattered by your interest."

If the situation weren't so surreal, John would have spluttered.

"You aren't unattractive", he said instead, "but I'm not gay."

"Does it matter?" John stared at him blankly and he rolled his eyes.

"You don't have a girlfriend." It wasn't a question.

"No." John affirmed.

"Is that why you're so sad, John? Because you're _lonely_? Because you'll leave for war soon and be _lonelier_?" He said lonely as though it were a vile word.

It was a vile feeling, John knew.

Sherlock drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around it. "You'll always be lonely, you know that? In your own head. We all will be."

A spider crawled out of the shadows. John idly watched it crawl back in.

"Our minds, John, it's all that exists for us individually. I'll never feel your perception; I'll never feel your definition of happiness, of anger. That green I see right now is so much greener than the green I'll see when I come down", he stared sadly at a small plant standing out of the earth, and giggled abruptly, leaving John bewildered. "And it could be completely different from your green, and you could never describe it. You're alone in your awareness, John. As am I. In essence, we'll always be alone. Do you see?"

John, bewildered still, could see.

"My perception will always be my own, and yours will be your own. It could be completely different and we'd never know, because it's always vaguely the same. You can't come into my consciousness and feel what I feel. I can't go into yours."

Sherlock sighed, and turned his bleary gaze heaven-wards. "All illusions, anyway, perception. Disguised by our minds to be beautiful. Stars look amazing against the black doesn't it? It isn't even actually black, you probably know that, just so intensely bright our brains can't process it. Do you ever think there might be brains that could?"

No, he didn't. John turned up to the shining void as well, eyes roaming the vast near emptiness. Although empty it wasn't, and Sherlock voiced this thought.

"So many lives must be up there somewhere", he murmured. "Lives that won't matter to us because we'll never find it, it's far too out of our reach. We're all alone, John. Humans are all human will ever have, and we don't even fully have each other. It's a trick. Everything…" he trailed off. "Stars and planets against a dimensional backdrop we can't begin to understand. Hell, we don't even know _where _it is because it's all warped. Do you see? Your vision, your consciousness, everything you think is reality – all warped. You can never prove anything is real, John. So what's the point of this information? Planets orbit the stars, six dimensional metaphysical planes, an infinite balloon of magnetic pull and more unidentified dark matter than what we think we can classify into what we know. What's the point?"

He laughed softly. "Might as well delete it."

A frightening insecurity unfurled tugged at John's navel as he listened, the zenith he looked into too far up and bottomless, haunting. He'd never been more aware of the spin he couldn't feel, the sounds he couldn't hear, the lights he couldn't see. The strong scent of cannabis was making him slightly dizzy, his skin tingling, hyperaware. Theirs was an existence of shared insignificance, shielded and deluded, ripples of terrible but beautiful mystery – it was their link to each other. It was strangely comforting.

He crawled over – yes, _crawled,_ until they were leaning against the same tree, the heat of Sherlock's side against his own. He smelled like a whole assortment of herbs with a lingering smell of sweat and sex and John wanted to reach under his clothes and touch him. Pull off his own clothes and pull off his, and just touch, maybe even climb in if he could. It was the sort of chemical attraction one developed after months of companionship, and it had come out of nowhere, catching him unawares and throwing him off. Where had it come from?

He was getting dizzier.

Sherlock's head came to rest on his shoulder and his unmanageable hair tickled John's jaw, his nose nudging his neck. He unwrapped his arms, legs stretching out besides John's as he leaned into the older man, one gentle hand coming to lightly touch where John's hands had been scraped earlier. It stung a bit and John extracted it, pulling it up and around thin shoulders. Sherlock moved even closer into him, sighing.

"You smell so good", he purred. Warm, moist lips touched John's neck without caveat and he started, desire blooming in his stomach.

It should've felt wrong to want this, John knew. To capture the supple lips with his own, to dip hands into the flimsy shirt and along the young body of this stranger. The unbidden yearning for closeness, ungrounded and unyielding still – it shouldn't have felt this natural. Sherlock kissed his jaw, and then he was murmuring sweetly into his ear again.

"It doesn't matter, you know. College, family, political affluence…wars. In the scheme of things it doesn't matter what we do. Life is capricious and we're nothing but chemical reactions with a mind capable of creating worlds of its own. Keep the data you want to keep, Doctor, do what you enjoy doing. Go bleed in the deserts for the rich if that's what you want. Kiss me, if that's what you want. Things are already far too complex for you to add to its complexity."

It wasn't a progeny of sagacity this logic, but following his stray thread of philosophy John would find later in the sanguinary war, panicking amongst the macabre of it, in the depression of uselessness and invalidity, or in the titillating rush with this very madness in his arms, that the advice taken to heart in this dream-like hours would shape his life into what it would be, and he wouldn't, not for a single moment, want it to be any other way. For now, however, he kissed madness softly, tugged him close, and made sweet, unabashed love on the forest floor, uncaring of wandering eyes, because here, the wandering eyes didn't care either.

It would be another decade before they would require each other again. Another decade before they would find each other again.


End file.
